


Benevolent Beasts and Shining Suns

by AnOddSock



Category: Supernatural
Genre: A lot of weird crap, Case Fic, Don't Examine This Too Closely, Eldritch, Fae & Fairies, Gen, He's a ray of sunshine and the world should know it, I really believe it is, I will fight and die on this hill, Jack saves the day by making friends, Literally that's it that's the whole fic, Luchador Wrestler, Magic, Men of Letters Bunker, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Sort Of, They get a day at the beach!, Time Shenanigans, so that's nice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-24 05:27:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14948421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnOddSock/pseuds/AnOddSock
Summary: Where will Jack end up when he walks into the belly of the beast? Where will the beast end up when it lets Jack enter its soul?





	Benevolent Beasts and Shining Suns

**Author's Note:**

> If you follow me for the explicit, smutty fic, this isn’t that. I don’t really know what this is.  
> Feel free to click away now and save yourself from the utter oddness this fic contains

There has been a string of strange missing persons reports surrounding the forested area.

And a string of missing people turning back up on their doorsteps, weeks later, saying that they hadn’t been missing and no time has passed.

They are often dehydrated and thought to be delusional, experiencing lapses in memory from head injuries or trauma. They all have strange stories of bizarre creatures in the woods and floating lights with teeth and claws and deep dreamless sleep.

None of them are badly harmed but shaken, battered, and bruised.

It is starting to make the papers in the local area when Patience has a dream.

Which is how Kaia and Jack end up here, trawling through the forest looking for answers. Patience has seen them both here, so here they both are.

Half a day of looking for Will o’ the wisps has led them in wide circles.

So they sit, drinking water and talking. Kaia, tired and unsure of her place in all this, beginning to think of wondering if she should start to suggest that they leave. In a sudden flash a small and hairy pixie-like creature appears before them, it squeaks excitedly, it leaves again.

Jack stands, exuberant.

“I think we’ve found something” he says.

At the very least, something has found them.

Minutes pass as they wait, as they wonder if they should walk further.

Before they can or do, two tall and elegant figures step silently out of the trees.

Kaia’s jaw drops at their beauty, Jack is stunned by their appearance.

“Jack, of the Winchester clan, Kaia, wayward daughter, welcome.”

“Thank you,” Jack says reverently.

“We require your assistance, this is why you have come?”

“Yes, if we can help, we will,”

They are led deeper into the woodland, but it doesn’t grow darker, only still, only quiet.

“What are they?” Kaia whispers.

“We are Fae,” they answer in unison, “we are the caretakers of this place, we live between the worlds, but lately something has drawn us out.”

They explain, as they walk, about a mysterious force that has been consuming the woods. Eating up time, causing havoc, disrupting physics and tampering with the weylines.

“We do not know what it is, or how it came to be here,” they reply sadly when Jack asks. “Only that it is old, and beyond our skill to help or fight - depending on what is needed.”

A few more paces and they stop at the edge of a clearing, the clearing leads to a cave. The cave is not what it seems.

“We will leave you here, we are not welcome, go, see for yourselves.”

So go they do.

 

* * *

 

The creature is not an animal or a beast, it is not alive so much as it exists. And as it exists, when Kaia and Jack step into the clearing it pulls itself into a less strange shape.

It becomes a large and colourful bird, perched on a low branch, in front of where the cave existed before.

There is no cave now, the cave exists inside the bird and nowhere else.

They look at the bird for a long while, waiting. They don’t know what they are waiting for.

The creature chirrups with its small bird mouth and Jack approaches with interest.

“You don’t belong here,” he says, quiet, contemplative.

The creature tweets again.

“Why are you taking people? Are you the one taking people?”

“I took no-one, without asking,” the bird replies, a high squeaky voice that sounds almost human.

Kaia startles, taking half a step away. “You can talk?”

“I can do many things, and many things are contained within me. I only wish to find my way home.”

“Where do you come from?” Jack asks.

“Everywhere, nowhere, I am here and here I’ve always been. I was there before they rooted me out,”

“What is that, a riddle?” Kaia wonders out loud.

“Not a riddle,” it replies sadly, “just my life.”

Jack takes a moment to consider the words, head tilted and brows drawn close together.

“You… lived somewhere else, and people encroached into your realm?”

“Yes! They came, and they didn’t like what they saw, what I am, they came again with pitchforks and salt lines and weak human magic to expel me! I fled, I came here and the same thing happens over and over again.”

“We won’t hurt you,” Jack says, looking to Kaia for confirmation. Kaia is dubious but nods, her trust in Jack a flimsy but stubborn thing.

“Everyone hurts everyone, there is no sanctuary I can find among the new places of the world,” the bird has grown larger, voice deeper in its agitation.

“We’re not like everyone else,” Jack insists, “we can help you, make sure no one else - not you, not them - ever has to hurt each other again.”

“I don’t believe you.” the bird calls out, loud and shrill.

Kaia covers her ears, looking alarmed at Jack, wonders if they are any match for this being.

“How can I prove it to you?” Jack asks.

“I tested the others, put them through the trial I always have, to make a judge of their character. Everyone falls short now, not like in times of old where humans had character and wonder, bravery and kindness. The world is harsh now,” it trills, beats its wings, “I must be harsh back or they will eat me up and spit me out.”

“I’ll take your trial,” Jack says, sure, less sure then he seems, but convinced it is the thing to do.

“Jack,” Kaia says, hesitant, “is that a good idea?”

They look at each other and while they look the creature transforms itself into a giant lizard, a dragon by any other name. It lays on the forest floor, jaw to the ground, docile and calm.

Kaia’s eyes widen in shock, Jack is stunned and curious, zinging with disbelief.

“If you walk into my realm,” it says, voice a slithering rasp, “you can see what the others did, and I will know if you are the same or altered. You will not have access to any magic in these trials, you will be rendered as human as all the rest.”

Jack walks forward, looking deep into the creatures eyes, looking for malevolence, finding only sadness.

“I agree,” he answers after a time, “if I pass, will you come with us, and let us find you a new place to live where no one has to be harmed?”

“I agree,” the creature replies in turn, opening its jaw wide, showing the gaping maw of its dragon sized throat.

Jack offers Kaia his hand, face open, bright with trust and warmth.

“Would you like to come with me?”

Kaia stammers, looking unsure, verging on afraid. “It - it said you won’t have your powers in there,”

“Oh, I don’t think I’ll need them. If a human can pass this test it must be alright.”

“Just because a person _could_ doesn’t mean that anyone actually ever _would_.” Kaia says, holding her ground.

Jack smiles and shrugs “Well someone has to try, will you wait out here for me?”

He steps forward and Kaia surges to his side with a huff. Jack looks at her, eyebrows raised in question.  
“I’m not letting you go in there by yourself! If you’re brave enough, then I am, it can’t be worse than, well, you know.”

And Jack does know. And he’s completely one hundred percent sure that this won’t be like her worst fears.

They join hands, they step.

The jaws are wide, teeth and tongue and dank, dark air. Wet and red, gleaming saliva strands between sharp incisors.

They walk, and are swallowed whole.  
          

* * *

 

The world shifts around Jack, and at the same time nothing shifts, and also at the same time everything changes.

No more jaws, no more acidic air.

There is light and space, Kaia still by his side. He halts and takes his bearings, making a small noise of surprise.

“What happened?” Kaia spins around, looking for the way they entered. “How did we - where did the monster go?”

“I think… this is the monster.” Jack doesn’t think it’s a monster at all. “I think this is his mind? Or his soul. Maybe. Do you think creatures have souls?”

“I don’t know! How are you so calm?”

Jack smiles, “Well, we’re not harmed, and we’re” he squints in the sunlight “on a beach! I love the beach.”

“We’re not on a beach,” Kaia says seriously. “If it looks like a beach, smells like a beach, but you had to get there through the jaws of a giant lizard thing, you’re not on a beach.”

“There’s sand,”

“Yes,”

“And the ocean,”

“I know, but-“

“I think the creature wants us to believe we’re on a beach.”

Kaia sighs and scuffs her foot in the sand. “Your life is weird.”

She’s not wrong, but it’s her life now too.  
  

* * *

 

 They walk the length of the beach, or at least they try. They walk for miles and they never move.

They move but the scene never changes.

The sand goes on before them forever, the horizon never coming closer, the sky falling away above them into time.

They talk and enjoy the sun, Kaia throws sand at Jack. Jack laughs, face bright and alive with joy.

The creature glows. The sun shines brighter.

Eventually they stop. It feels like a whole day, it hasn’t been any time at all.

“Now what?” Kaia asks.

“I don’t know,” Jack frowns, and clouds pass the sun. “I thought there would be more… something. How can I help, how can I pass the test, if I don’t know what the test is.”

“Walking this way isn’t getting us anywhere.” Kaia points out.

Jack turns on the spot. “Hello!” he shouts. Of course, he doesn’t get an answer.

Unless the answer is the sky turning sideways. Skies cannot turn sideways. This isn’t a sky.

“I can take your test now! Please, I’m here!”

The sky opens and sheds a small tear. Small in terms of sky is large in terms of people. Jack is not a person, but he is also not anything else. The sky cries and it’s an inky spread of purple across the blue.

Jack, confused, looks at Kaia, bewildered.

“We could leave?” she asks hesitantly.

But no, they really can’t.

They can, but only by not leaving. Jack has to stay the course.

“Hmm,” Jack ponders as the not-sun watches and the not-air listens. “This way isn’t working,” he gestures at the slip of beach ahead of them, “maybe we should go this way.”

He takes a step toward the ocean. The ocean creeps a wave towards him. His feet move, the world breathes in.

He steps again, and again, Kaia hurrying to close the distance between them, not wanting to be left behind.

Jack’s feet reach the water before him, as feet have a way of doing. He sinks in the wet sand and grins at the feel.

Kaia grips his arm, “Now where?”

Jack gestures at the expanse of blue, it is not blue, it is crystal made liquid.

Kaia shakes her head, “Are you crazy?”

“Probably, all the best people are.” He says with a wide smile. Jack read that in a book somewhere.

This is not a book.

They walk arm in arm as the water envelopes them.

 

* * *

 

 There is a room under the waves, or perhaps, made of waves.

Solid and strong.

Kaia sits on the floor and shudders through the last of her worries. Probably the last. Maybe. She’s very unsure.

Jack is curious.

“So…” he speaks slowly, “a test. A series of… rooms? Experiences, things to overcome.” he turns in a slow circle. The walls are salmon pink and as he looks a shelf appears, popping into existence with the surety of an item that never thought of not existing.

Jack brightens, his clothes should be dripping wet and they are not, and things are materialising before his eyes. Shiny toys, keepsakes, weather worn objects and gilded things.

Rows and rows of shelves and curiosities. Small stones, a paper weight, photographs and diaries and wind up toys and jars of sticky honey. He examines them all closely, never touching.

Jack pulls Kaia to her feet, eyes sparkling bright. He’s seen everything, he’s counted all the blessings.

“Is it a choice? We have to pick the right thing, to move on?”

“No, this isn’t for us. We’re only passing through.”

They didn’t disturb anything.

They were never here at all.

 

* * *

 

 The walls around them disperse into mist and pop out of sight like the bursting of a balloon.

It's dark now, a space illuminated only by a spotlight over a large white mat.

Jack strides toward it with confidence, his feet light, his spirit buoyed by their progress so far. He glances at Kaia who is calmer now and interest growing.

They wait a long time in the circle of light. It's quiet. The kind of quiet that is very loud, making itself known so you don't forget it's there.

Jack is about to move outwards across the mat and beyond the light, when a figure appears.

Large and heavy set, bare chested with bright stretch trousers clinging to its form.

A man.

Not a man but the idea of a man.

His face is covered by a mask of green and red leather, rimmed in white.

Jack greets him with a cheery wave and a chipper hello. The figure halts. Time suspends itself around the dust motes, collecting into little pockets of watchful energy.

Kaia takes Jack's arm. “He's a wrestler, you know that right?”

Jack surveys first her and then the stocky man he's faced with.

“Yes,” he replies slowly, “a luchador wrestler!”

The man nods. The ground trembles with anticipation.

“Are you the test?” Kaia asks.

There is no reply.

“Jack, I'm not sure you can beat him without your powers,” Kaia whispers urgently.

Jack tilts his head in thought and the floor beneath him arranges itself in the opposite direction, just to make the scales balance out.

“We're supposed to wrestle?” he says softly, a question within a statement.

A nod from the wrestler and a sigh from Kaia. Jack is quiet.

“Can you show me how? It sounds like fun.” Jack says, enthusiasm radiating from him. The dust motes vibrate, bumping against each other in a jostling pattern.

The wrestler takes a step, Jack reaches out and they grasps arms.

The black edges of the world fill with light and soon Jack and the man are dancing the intricate moves of the sport.

Jack doesn't care about winning.

The wrestler doesn't care to lose.

Jack spins wildly in joy, thrown around as his body accommodates to his expectations.

The wrestler is gentle. He pins Jack to the floor with a swoosh

Jack grins “Does that mean you won?”

The wrestler shrugs and releases his hold on Jack's shoulders.

Jack rises to his feet and thanks the larger man.

His sincerity shows among the sheen of sweat across his brow.

The wrestler nods solemnly and winks out of existence.

 

* * *

 

 Kaia watches Jack work his way through many obstacles and areas, he navigates all of them with ease. She's not sure she understands if this is the test or only a quest to get there.

She helps with careful consideration as Jack befriends a small woodland clearings worth of animals and leads her into their midst to help bury nuts and stash seeds for the small creatures.

She looks on with admiration as he carves a rough approximation of a wooden chess piece to complete the small set they find sitting neglected in a hospital-like waiting room.

She laughs in amusement when he lets a large group of children throw balloons filled with paint directly at him, covering every inch of his hair and clothes. Making his outside as bright and colourful as his youthful soul.

 

* * *

 

 The creature is watching too. The creature is everywhere, everything; it sees and it smiles. And it’s smile is light and air and warmth and Kaia notices, she feels the calm surround them, the benevolence in the quiet, the joy of the dance.

They dance and they move and Jack passes every moment with grace, ease, kindness, and strength.

He has no strength here but the building blocks of his character, a desire to hold and help, to bring peace, to be kind - first and always.

The creature is not disturbed, it’s rest never interrupted, though it was never resting; only waiting and watching. It wonders, and its wondering is the cogs of the universe, spinning into motion for the task ahead.

One final thought, one last question. A question makes lightning, causes sparks, lifts the webs of grey sadness from its eyes and makes it lean forward in anticipation.

It has not questioned another on eons, only judged, only ever recoiling at the world. Turning into itself over and again, folding and growing until its very thoughts were ice.

Jack has been the thaw, the avalanche, Kaia has been the witness.

So.

It will see.

Disappointment a heavy weight of possibility, clouds and rain and wet sticky earth. But there is sun, weakly shining, and the sun is its heart and its heart has not found them wanting.

 

* * *

 

 Jack pauses.

Breath in, breath out.

Something is coming. He can sense it. It can sense him.

They’re in an open field, and the edges are folding up to meet them and there’s thunder in the sky. A raindrop falls and catches on the edge of the earth.

The ground moves below them a wild and wicked thing. Slipping and sliding, undulating where they stand.

And yet they are safe they are steady. Kaia grips his hand and looks into his eyes and nods.

She trusts him. There was never any reason not to, and now there isn’t any reason to remember that she couldn’t before.

He hasn’t led them wrong.

The ground rises up and writhes before them, a giant arm of muscle and suckers, grey with mud.

It coils around them, and then it isn’t one it is many. The air, the space, the walls, all made of tentacles. Inching closer surrounding them both where they stand united.

“What do we do?” Kaia yells over the din of commotion.

“Nothing,” Jack shouts back, “I don’t think it will hurt us, I don’t want to hurt it!”

Kaia nods, but she shakes, resolve set but fear underneath.

The wriggling mass inches closer, hemming them in and they crowd together on the floor.

It’s not a floor, it is a dream.

Kaia shouts in fear as they wrap around them.

Jack hesitates a fraction and the fraction splits the world, it is moving and pausing all at once and he sees it then, the outcome the option, the only way forward.

He wraps his arms around his friend, shields her from the crushing clawing feelers.

The push into him, drawing up and under his clothes into his hair, down his throat and into his being.

 _“It doesn’t want to hurt us”_ he thinks over and over as he is split in two, protecting Kaia, safe underneath his embrace, eyes alight and wild.

And with a pop everything is over.

They are crouched in the middle of the clearing once again.

They never really left.

 

* * *

 

 Jack stands, unharmed and whole and shining like a beacon. Kaia draws herself up beside him with a whisper of a curse on her tongue.

They are out, they have completed the test, the creature glides towards them in a vaguely human form.

It bows, low and long before rising.

It’s voice the cadence and sound of wind through trees, it speaks, “I see now, there is good in you, and if it is in you, it must be in the world.”

Jack beams, and then falters “There’s so much good, but you can’t keep hurting people.”

“I never meant to,” it says sadly, “they were never meant to find me.”

“Can you leave them alone now?” Kaia asks kindly.

“I would, I will, if I could find somewhere they would let me be. Where should I go now, to find peace?”

Jack thinks long and hard, and smiles at Kaia.

“I think I know a place. A secret place.”

Kaia gives him a strange look.

 

* * *

 

They arrive at the bunker as a small strange gaggle of travellers. The girl, the nephilim, and the being.

The Winchesters aren’t home, and Jack leads the way, down the road down the stairs, through the corridors into the very heart of the chambers.

He turns in a circle, arms wides and gesturing.

“Will this be a good place for you?” he ask the humanoid creature as it materialises through the walls beside him.

“Yes,” it hums in response, “yes I believe it will.”

“What will you do here?” Kaia asks, hovering awkwardly in the doorway.

“Exist,” comes the reply, “rest, just be.” the voice goes quiet, and the figure becomes more and more transparent.

“And I can help, where I can, however I can, we’ll get along well together. We always did.”

It melts into the tiles and then the voice resonates out of the walls, vibrates up through the floor.

“Thank you, Jack, angel-child, and Kaia, dreamwalker of worlds - for bringing me home.”

A door opens where there wasn’t a door before and Jack is only temporarily surprised. They walk through it one after the other and find themselves in the kitchen.

The creature lives here now, Jack thinks, and it can bend reality around it. The air grows warm around him and he smiles.

He shows Kaia around the bunker, pointing out places filled with his early memories. But there are things here now that he doesn’t recall before, brighter lights and doorways leading between rooms that didn’t exist before and cease to exist once you’ve used them.

Books pull themselves incrementally off their shelves as he passes.

Kaia finds her favourite drink stockpiled in a store room that she cannot find again hours later.

The bunker is alive, and it is here to help.

 

* * *

 

 Jack knows he has to tell the Winchesters what has happened and he finds Sam two days later to tell his tale.

Sam’s eyes are full of pride as Jack recounts how he passed the test, saved lives and helped a lost creature.

When it comes to the part of telling Sam how the bunker has changed, what now inhabits its walls, he hesitates.

“I brought it here,” he confesses.

“Here?” Sam asks, surprised and alarmed. “Where is it?”

“It… became part of the fabric of the walls, I think. I don’t think it’s malicious.”

“What do you mean, ‘became part of the bunker’?”

And Jack explains, the changes, the shifts in reality, the way the bunker seems to live and breathe and _think_.

And Sam laughs, small and happy, “Jack, the bunker has always been like that!” And turns and walks away.

Jack frowns, because no it really hasn’t.

But he talks softly to the walls that night, asking question after question, looking for answers.

He finds a note in a book the next day that says

 _Time is fickle_  
_And the universe is large_  
_I become, I became_  
_I am now and always was_  
_I live and have lived_  
_It has always been me here_  
_It is as though I never were not_

 _Time is fickle_  
_And human minds are small_  
_I will and I was,_  
_So I say and so I shall_  
_Thank you friend_  
_For finding me home_

The bunker is alive.

And so, it always was.

**Author's Note:**

> [Wondering what the hell this is all about?](http://spncoldesthits.tumblr.com/post/174961872050/spncoldesthits-luchador-wrestlers-eldritch)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>    
> If you made it this far I congratulate you, but don't worry about leaving comments or kudos, just... walk away like this never existed. Because, in a way, it never really did.


End file.
